I am Bien Patrick M. Velasquez 24 years of age. I graduated from the University of Santo Tomas Manila, Major in Marketing. Currently at the young age, recognized as a young entrepreneur, I am at the stage of developing, learning new things and experiencing the real life of a true business man and a true leader for my employees. Honestly I never worked outside the company of our family, after I graduated my father immediately ask me to help me in operating the company. We owned a funeral business established since 1959. It was established by my Grandfather, Gervacio Velasquez until he pass it on to my current boss and owner of the company, my father, Celso S. Velasquez. My father's vision is to follow his footsteps in how to manage and operate our business. At my current age, I think I am in the stage of learning and growing up, stage on how to face the daily expectations of your family, but not just my family but also most especially to the family of your customers, our market. I am also pressured on how to handle my own employees in order for them to respect me and be productive in their own specific task inside the organization. At the age of 23, I am handling one of the branch in Floridablanca, Pampanga. As a manager I need to have my own strategy and plan in order to survive the intense competition in the said area. I also need to gain the trust and respect from my employees since they are older than me. I need to give them the right decisions, strategies in order to gain their trust in leading them especially in making tough decisions and facing all the problems inside the company. I think the very defining moment of my current career is handling to me, giving the responsibility of handling one of the branches of the company. Giving me the full control of everything. Books, papers, notes, lectures, subjects are just supplementary of being a successful leader. Experiences and your inner self are your best teachers, not to mention your gifts and talents that God has given you. This are the tools we need as a human in order to be successful. Be humble and learn how to deal with different people with different attitudes. Again, my very own defining moment in my current career is handling to me bigger responsibility and the pressure of knowing someone is expecting for a productive result. As a young business man this is my defining moments at this point in time of my career, I know I will face a lot of struggles and problems along the way but my inner talents and gifts will help me to strive, to find solution, to empower myself in order to become successful.
What is the relation to what I already know?
Again, the best teacher is our own talents, experiences, fall and struggles throughout our career. The relationship between the teachings inside the university and the real life experience is very different. The school will teach you the terms, will feed you different kinds of situations, terminologies, formulas but never teach you on how to apply them in real life. The reality is that, if we put it into real life situation, the learnings from school/ university is just a niche in the whole learnings you will acquire through experience and real life situations wherein you will face problems, struggles that you will need to face in order for you to mature and create your own solution to your problems. Another major point in my book is that people learn how to be good managers through experience rather than through training. I don't think you can teach anyone to lead. I think you can help people learn how to teach themselves to lead and manage. What I already know is basically by the book, from the professors and teachings of my University.
What is the new learning? What have I done? Doing?
I learned and discovered my new duties, obligations, and interdependencies. I also learned that formal authority is a very limited source of power, my subordinates won't necessarily listen to me. The other thing that happens is that I get better from my new responsibilities, I get more of the results I want, and that can be quite satisfying. So in that sense I think there is indeed learning. I also learn how to handle and adjust to different kind/ type of people, from poor to rich, from kind to worst attitude that you will face into day to day operation of the company. As of now I am still learning a lot in becoming a true manager and as a leader. I hope that one day I can continue the legacy of my Grandfather, not just to continue, but to strive more and be a successful entrepreneur in the future. In the question, what have I done? I guess my answer is facing the challenge that my father gave me. I did make him proud by simply following his footsteps and orders on what to do inside the business. I will continue his legacy and prove to him that I can and I will operate someday the whole business and make it grow bigger and create my own legacy to pass it on to my children and my grandchildren hopefully. I am now at my second year in becoming a manager. I fulfill all my obligations base on the learnings from school and also apply the traditional way of handling it by listening to older employees, especially the ideas from my father. As a manager, I am doing my role in order to improve not just myself but also improve my employee's potential in every aspect of their responsibility. What am I doing right now is simply discussing my role with my boss, setting future plans in order to make the company to grow bigger. I also learned from my role models. I consider my parents as a role model and those people surrounding me with experiences about the nature of our business. Another thing is that I get to know my people and let them know about me. I always conduct monthly meeting in order to know their suggestions, complaints and concerns about the policies and basically the operation around the company. Since most of my employees are older and more experienced than me, I make it a point that to understand their individual differences. I am establishing a strong relationship with them in order to acquire and get their respect by being their young boss. I also recognized them every time they did a great job in performing their specific tasks. The important thing that I'm doing is that accepting their comments or suggestions in order for them to feel that they are involved and give them importance inside the organization. My greatest challenge was to understand that I needed to figure out for myself the best way to lead and have an impact on my organization. 3
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